Thursday, July 23, 2015

Here's a current excerpt from an academic article I'm writing on the problems facing the integration of science and religion, especially in light of the attitudes of 18-30 year olds.

In discussing the relation between
religion and science, it sounds like a conversation about two things (and may imply, to many) a conversation between Christian faith and science). And that
fact may deceive us in understanding the attitudes of 18-30 year olds on the
topic. Emerging adults have grown up in an environment saturated with options
and possibilities. This experience has become increased through the explosion
of knowledge on the Internet, with the number of websites fast approaching one
trillion (a number that can be monitored here).

In
some ways, this is essentially the reality of pluralism, and we could argue
that this not really a new problem. But that notion strikes me as a bit naïve.
Pluralism is not entirely novel, to be sure, but it will certainly continue to
increase. And for the focus of this article—namely, emerging adults—the panoply
of options available makes it difficult to decide about science and religion. In a recent article (behind paywall), “The ‘Relation’ between Science and Religion in the Pluralistic Landscape of Today’s World,” Zainal Abidin Bagir rightly notes that this simple “and”
between “science and religion”
obscures a mass of complications, for one thing, that both are primarily about
ideas. And
there are other concerns: Emerging adults are not only facing the situation of religion (in the singular) and the way
it interacts with science, they are coming to grips with the variety of
religions that can be brought to bear on scientific insights, and not only the
five classic world religions of Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, and
Islam, which leaves out religious traditions with rather large numbers of
adherents such as Sikhism, but also indigenous traditions as well. Bagir
rightly highlights these concerns and concludes that

The intention to
expand the discourse by taking into account the pluralistic landscape that we
know and experience today requires not simply inviting more participants from
different religious traditions but also demands the expansion of the
conceptions of “science” and “religion.” (p. 406)

But I think we need to go further.

Emerging
adults are experimenting with various religious inputs and therefore not subscribing
to one single religious tradition. Put a slightly different way, emerging
adults I have interviewed find it hard to decide on one religion in light of all the possibilities for spirituality,
which makes it difficult to know which religion to bring to science. “I can’t
commit to any religion until I know more” was a common refrain, which may
reflect “choice phobia,” but may also be a statement of supreme humility. And
this pluralism is not simply moving beyond religion and Christianity to any number of other religions, whether “world
religions” or indigenous ones. It is about dividing religious practice in
various slices. Analogically, this is an iPod playlist approach to religion
instead of an LP one in which the listener makes the choices from a variety of
artists, and is not bound by the sequence that the artists themselves assemble.
If it sounds like we have arrived back at Wuthnow’s theme of emerging adults as
bricoleurs (or "those who tinker"), then I have made my
point. Thus many voices exist, and many students blend a variety of spiritual
insights, certainly not simply Christian, but other religious traditions, such
as Buddhism and Wiccan practices, as well. In addition, there are those who synthesize
belief with materialism, such as the hard-core biochemistry student who could
not deny that he prayed and the request seem to be granted. He remains unsure that
this is not simply coincidence, and yet, continues to pray. The blend of
various beliefs—and even unbelief—confuses the theoretician who seeks pure
types, but that is the reality of emerging adult culture. Ultimately, the
choice may be based on an inherent pragmatism, and not on what is theoretically
true. All this makes twenty-first century pluralism, as practiced by 18-30 year
olds, complicated and dizzying to grasp. We have left the world of two-dimensional
“science and religion” to something much more multi-dimensional for which I
frankly have no substitute term.

Finally,
in this search for religious answers, one result is that many emerging adults
would rather Google than go to a congregation in pursuing answers about science
and religion. One of the questions I posed in the interviews was this: “Where
would you go to look for answers about science and religion?” A large majority responded:
“the Internet.” As I mentioned above, the conflict model seems to predominate
on the Internet in its craving to provide “click bait” for its users,
provocative snippets of articles that demand our attention by their outrageous
or adversarial claims. (We are naturally, neurologically stimulated by threat,
novelty, and conflict.)These
emerging adults find faith in the Internet (as it were) because of its putative
neutrality, openness, and objectivity. Here I have to offer a further
differentiation for who curates this conversation. My research suggests that,
in addition to the Internet, academic voices have some air of neutrality for
those outside faith communities. In contrast, for the 18-30 year olds who
approach this question as Christians, for example, Jonathan Hill’s research indicates
that a pastor’s voice, because it defines a social world, of what can be
thought or not, is probably more important than the Internet or the college
classroom. Hill writes, “For most students, then, it matters little what their
professor teaches… What their friends, parents, and pastor thinks is going to
be far more important, because their social world is inextricably tied up with
these significant others" (Emerging Adulthood and Faith, 56). In
contrast, for religious seekers (in all varieties) outside of religious
communities, they are often distrustful of the church, synagogue, or mosque as
a place to seek out answers about science and religion. Partly, this reflects distrust
in institutional religious traditions as repositories for truth seeking. Partly,
whether this is accurate or not, imams, pastors, and rabbis are seen as “hired
guns,” who give answers that always reinforce their respective traditions
because they are hired to do so.

The net result is this: in order to make sense
of diversity of options, emerging adults increasingly look to the Internet,
which means the locus of their pluralistic search for relating—and perhaps
integrating—science and religion will continue to migrate to a diversity of
locations, but especially virtual ones.

Monday, July 13, 2015

This is a review of Oliver Crisp, Divinity and Humanity: The Incarnation
Reconsidered, Current Issues in
Theology (Cambridge, 2007) and continues my summer series of serious books I am reading seriously. Advisory: This book--and thus my review--engages intricate and potentially arcane theological topics.

Oliver Crisp teaches at Fuller
Theological Seminary and is a self-described proponent of “analytic theology,”
which brings the tools of analytic philosophy to the practice of theology. Analytic
philosophy seeks clarity of thought and language. So it’s no surprise that
Crisp begins clearly and crisply (could not avoid that pun!) by describing the
intent of Divinity and Humanity:

"This book is a small contribution to the doctrine of the person of Christ" (ix)

and that it will have three chapters expounding issues in Chalcedonian
Christology and three that defend it against the same number of modifications. The
six chapters address perichoresis as
a christological category, the anhypostasia-enhypostasia distinction,
whether Christ had a fallen nature, kenosis, and non-incarnational Christology.

Divinity and Humanity is an intricate
and, at times, quite difficult, collection of chapters. Therefore I’ve decided
to eschew any attempt at a comprehensive review and critique. Instead I’ll offer
a sketch of the total work with a few more specific reflections.

The
first chapter analyzes (let us never
forget this is “analytical theology”) the distinction between two types of perichoresis: nature-perichoresis (NP here, which is
applicable to Christology) and person-perichoresis
(PP here, useful for Trinitarian formulations). For those unfamiliar with the
term, perichoresis has the literal
meaning in Greek of “dancing around.” It is therefore the co-inherence of two natures
in Christ or of three persons in the Godhead, and tenders a way of maintaining
the unity of Christ, though he is both human and divine (thus NP) or the unity
of God, while being three persons in the Trinity (PP). Crisp assesses its
helpfulness as a category for Christology and Trinity, and also does not take
long before the reader (at least this one) realizes that NP will fare better in
Crisp’s analysis. It seems to me that Crisp is trying to avoid the rather
squishy way (if I may use a technical term here) that many theologians use perichoresis in the hopes of solving problems with formulations of the Trinity and
Christology.

So
Crisp wants to avoid theological (or philosophical) squishiness. And since he
is an analytical theologian—who thus looks for clarity of language and analysis—I
wondered about how univocally Crisp believes he can speak about God. Is there
essentially a one-to-one correspondence between what we say about God and God’s
true reality? Analytical tools may promise too much. My vote is that
theological language is most often analogical (that any language about God’s
reality is an analogy—i.e., God is not exactly
a father, but God is like a human
father in some ways). So here’s the kind of example from Crisp which provokes a
question: “But the divine nature cannot be omnipresent and powerless without
ceasing to be divine, because this entails that the divine nature is both
omnipotent and limited in power, which is contradictory” (13-14). How do we
know this contraction in human terms is also directly applicable to God? Maybe such formulations are “too human—far too
human” (to cite Karl Barth from Church
Dogmatics IV/1, 186), and such analysis simply makes little sense. Can God
both be described as omnipotent, but in that power decide to limit it? In
private conversation, I know he is aware of the issues of univocal or
analogical language (and the attendant theme of mystery), but I find quibbles
in places with his willingness to stick to the power of human philosophical
analysis where a certain ambiguity is left in the biblical witness.

The
second and third chapters address the human nature of Christ. Chapter Two is
the longest of the book (at just under forty pages) and looks at “several
longstanding theological problems for the Incarnation” (35) such as whether
Christ had one will (monothelitism) or two (dyothelitism). Incidentally, one
byproduct of such discussions in this book is that the reader quickly learns
some unknown theological vocabulary and territory. Since I have an ongoing
debate with a philosopher and friend about divine simplicity (that God is “simple,”
or entirely unified, and thus without parts), I was particularly intrigued to
read that we can look at Christologies according to their “parts.” Two-part Christologies assert a human
body and the Word, while three-part
ones present the Word, and a human nature with body and soul, distinct from the
Word (41-2). At the end of a lengthy historical and analytical (but to me, too rarely
biblical) tour, Crisp concludes “there is a strong case for dyothelitism” (49),
where divine and human wills worked in perfect consonance

The
anhypostasia-enhypostasia distinction
is the topic of Chapter Three. I’ll allow Ivor Davidson (in his article,
“Theologizing the human Jesus,” IJST
3 (2001): 135) to offer the pertinent clarification: “the human nature of Jesus
has not hypostasis of its own (it is
‘anhypostatic’), but subsists only
and always as the human nature of the Son of God…. Negatively, the humanity of
Jesus has not independent reality of its own; positively, it is hypostatized in union with, or in (en-hypostasis), the person of the Logos”
(cited by Crisp, 74). A three-part Christology “entails that there are
properties that the human nature of Christ exemplifies. It also means that the
human nature of Christ is ‘part’ of the person of the Word, who assumes this
human nature at the Incarnation” (89). Ultimately, Crisp leans toward a
three-part Christology, which also makes the best sense to me in order to
sustain the Chalcedonian declaration that Christ is fully human and fully divine.

Chapter
Four rejects Christ’s having taken on a fallen nature and represents a revision
of what Crips first articulated in a 2004 article, “Did Christ have a Fallen
Human Nature?” [IJST 6.3, 170-88]). His answer is No, and, on the face of it, this
contradicts key biblical texts such as John 1:14, which states “the word became
flesh (sarx),” a word that consistently
in the New Testament means fallen nature. (It also contradicts Barth’s work,
which both he and I admire.) Crisp, who loves to use terms to make distinctions
(another characteristic of analytic philosophers and theologians) presents a
“fallenness” view (that Christ’s human nature has property of being fallen) in
contrast to a “sinlessness” one (Christ’s nature was unfallen and therefore
sinless). Crisp argues for the latter (91). There are several ins and outs to
his argument, but the essence of it is quite simple: to be fallen means to be
sinful (106). And, according to classical theology, in order to be the Redeemer,
Christ was not sinful. Therefore this position is contradictory and incoherent
(111-2). (In some ways, it would be entirely consistent to contend for the
Immaculate Concept of Mary after this—since Jesus Christ’s humanity would have
to be untainted by sin.) One other key point is that Crisp works at this topic
through analyzing the meaning of original sin—he argues that humankind can have
original corruption without original guilt (e.g., 104). As a critique on this
chapter, I’ll cite David W. Congdon’s blog:

"Crisp
misunderstands Barth and Torrance (among others) in their affirmation of the
fallen human nature of Christ. The conflict rests, I believe, in radically
different ontologies, such that Barth has an actualized-historicized account of
what “nature” means, while Crisp works with a traditional, essentialist
account. While this by no means exhausts the issues at stake, I believe this is
where one must begin in order to unpack the christological ramifications."

Additionally, Crisp tends to
generalize positions and then dissect these general arguments, but does not
really engage in a point-by-point critique with his interlocutors. These are
criticisms, yes, but let them not take away from a careful presentation of his
theological conclusions.

Chapter
Five addresses the topic of divine kenosis,
which builds from the Greek verb “to empty” (ekenosen) in Philippians 2:7 as a critical description of Christ’s
work. Crisp decides to leave out the strong ontological approach to kenosis
(that Christ was fully emptied of divinity) and therefore to deal with the weak
ontological and functionalist ones (119-20). One of his key interlocutors on weak
ontological kenotic Christology is Stephen Davis (and his book, Logic and the Nature of God), who
presents the idea that omniscience is not an essential divine attribute and
therefore Christ could have emptied himself of knowing all in the Incarnation
(123ff.). In my view, Crisp’s most telling and essential (as it were) criticism
on this view of the essence of Christ is this: “it is very difficult indeed to
know where to draw the line demarcating contingent and essential divine
properties” (132). Next he takes on functionalist kenosis. These argue that the
second person did not abdicate divine attributes, but during the Incarnation,
he did not exercise them (140). All have weaknesses, and he believes a kryptic Christology is most worthy of
consideration (121), in which Christ’s divinity has an aspect of hiddenness,
even while he retains his divine nature.

The
final chapter was to me the clearest. Here he takes on, and ultimately argues
against, “non-incarnational” (read non-Chalcedonian) Christology. John Hick’s version
is the exemplar, which presents six key claims: Jesus did not teach that he was
God Incarnate, the Chalcedonian definition cannot be expressed adequately, the
two-natures doctrine has led to justify enormous evil, Incarnation is better
understood as a metaphor, Christians are best to focus on the life and teaching
of Jesus, and the metaphorical approach to the Incarnation fits best with
religious pluralism (155-6). To these points then: Crisp disputes Hick’s
presentation of the consensus of historical-critical scholars that Jesus did
not have a divine self-concept. Instead, as Richard Bauckham and Larry Hurtado
(and others) have argued, Jesus was worshiped as God from the very beginning of
the Christian movement (164-5). (Incidentally, Crisp regularly employs “Christ”
in this chapter, which is a title, i.e., the Messiah or Israel’s King. This confused
me because Jesus as Christ or Messiah is not really a component of his argument
in this chapter.) The problems with the intelligibility of the Chalcedonian
definition are what Hick calls a meaningless paradox, but Christian tradition
has seen this as a mystery beyond human comprehension (169-70). The third claim
(that two-natures doctrine leads to evil) takes Crisp just over a page to
reject since the connection between the misuse of a doctrine and its truth or falsity
are separate issues. As he puts in a footnote (171, n. 29)—but would have been
better in the text because of its persuasive value—liberal theology also has
many evils associated with it, e.g., liberal German theologians’ support for
the First World War. Crisp criticizes Hick’s understanding of myth as
expressing a truth that can also be fully translated into literal language
(175ff.). I hardly need to mention that Crisp is not impressed with Hick’s
concerns about a Christology that makes sense in a religious pluralistic world
(178-81). In a word, Crisp doesn’t find too much to commend Hick’s Christology,
saying that “Removal of the heart of the Incarnation from Christology is like removal
of the heart from a living human being” (xii), and even more, Hick’s view “holds
no terror for the Christian committed to incarnational Christology, for whom it
is either a diverting but false report of who Christ is, or a dangerous heresy
that should be resisted” (184).

What
about this text as an exemplar of analytical theology? In addition to my
comments above, the essential question remains—Are the tools of analytical
philosophy, formed to expunge metaphysical assertions from philosophy,
appropriate for theology? Yes and no. Yes—they offer clarity where it obviously
lacks in discussions about God, and it is astounding to see what results. No, when
it attempts to find “clear and distinct” language where analogical language is
more appropriate. As I mentioned above, Crisp is certainly aware of this
problem, but in my view, he falls prey nonetheless. For example, his discussion
of divine omnipotence strikes me as overly optimistic—optimistic that
categories useful for philosophical analysis of earthly reality work for God’s
nature.

In
conclusion, Crisp is brilliant and exceedingly well-read. One cannot help but learn in
reading this book. I applaud all this. For what it’s worth, I also agree with
many of his conclusions. Still, Crisp’s style is, appropriate to the analytical
tradition, somewhat dry. It is not, however, entirely detached because he obviously
cares about the subject-matter. Or
better, the Subject, God. Indeed there is doxology rumbling below the surface
of this book. Nonetheless, as one who appreciates and is certainly engaged by
the style of Karl Barth—which often resembles a rousing sermon—I wanted a bit
more of Crisp’s theological passion to rise to the surface. But maybe that’s
not the book he wanted to write! What he did create is a careful, thoughtful, faithful,
and serious theology. Simply put, if you want to learn about Christology, you
should read it.

Greg Cootsona’s C. S. Lewis and the Crisis of a Christian is a rich and rewarding journey through C. S. Lewis’ most influential ideas. Cootsona frames each of Lewis’ theological and philosophical contributions with the personal challenges from Lewis’ life, as well as struggles that Cootsona or people close to him have faced. This book is ideal for those who find themselves struggling with doubt, especially the personal kind -- doubt resulting from pain, loss, or confusion. Cootsona takes these struggles seriously, but also tries to present resolutions, concepts that can aid us in our struggles to find the way out of a crisis and back into the grace of God.

The book is organized into three main themes: philosophical arguments for the existence of God, theological arguments for basic Christian tenets (the exclusivity of Christ and the role of the Bible), and personal arguments for resolving basic struggles of feeling, suffering and death in universal human experience. In my judgment the book gets better the further it goes. I’m not sure why this is, but Cootsona seems to find his voice the deeper he pushes into Lewis’ oeuvre.

There are some aspects to grumble with. Despite Cootsona’s opening protestation that the book is not hagiography, the reader starts to wonder after awhile just how often we need to be reminded that C. S. Lewis is brilliant. In a few places clarity gets lost, as for example when Cootsona makes one of Lewis’ arguments into an explicit structure on p. 40. He provides us four premises about "naturalism" before drawing a conclusion about "materialism." Although he does tell us eleven pages earlier that he will use these terms interchangeably, this is still an unnecessary switch in terms, and it makes the logic of the argument more obscure. A third stylistic problem that arises is Cootsona’s occasional use of specialized jargon despite the book’s aim at a general audience. The fourth chapter of the book has as its title "the crisis of anomie." Despite being a graduate student in philosophy, I had never even heard of the term ‘anomie,’ and even after looking it up its connection to the chapter topic wasn’t always apparent. What’s most remarkable about this lexical choice is that at no point in the chapter does Cootsona define the term. For readers looking to Cootsona to understand the more difficult parts of Lewis, I don’t think this is going to help.

Still, the overall aim of the book, which is to connect all of Lewis’ disparate writings on particular topics in a clear way, succeeds admirably. The book is a rich discussion of Lewis’ core ideas, and Cootsona tries to show them their practical application. If I were to pick one chapter as a stand-out, the sixth chapter on C. S. Lewis’ approach to reading the Bible is worth the price of the book by itself. Cootsona masterfully draws together C. S. Lewis’ notoriously unsystematic writings on the Bible into a coherent whole consisting of four core theses: (i) the Bible is authoritative for Christian living because of its role in the church and because it bears witness to the Word, Jesus Christ; (ii) the Bible has flaws but it nonetheless is the bearer of the Word of God; (iii) the Bible includes myth, fable, parable, and poetry, but none of these genres are necessarily fiction; (iv) and lastly, the Bible influences us by forming us, not by learning a theory about it. While I have long thought Lewis’ approach to scripture is the most sensible, Cootsona brought out a lot of subtleties in Lewis’ thought that I had not noticed.

As I said, this book is best for those looking for thoughtful reflection in response to the universal experiences of all people, and Christians in particular. Cootsona is pastoral throughout, attempting to always leave the reader with life lessons that are applicable as well as encouraging. Highly recommended overall!